The invention relates to the field of photonic band gap devices, and in particular to a PBG device using a large air gap defect to tune its resonant wavelength.
In wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), tunability of add-drop wavelengths is important. Various devices can be used to accomplish tuning, such as thermal tuning, MEMS tuning, and electro-optical tuning. However, the prior art has not demonstrated a multichannel and tunable add/drop filter having telecom wavelengths of 1.5 μm and 1.3 μm that performs continuous tunability through optical communication bands. Thus, there is a need in the art for a multichannel tunable add/drop filter that performs continuous tuning in terms of voltage on a one dimensional (1-D) photonic bandgap (PBG) device with an air defect.